


Guilt at gunpoint

by ChristyLN



Category: 2P Hetalia - Fandom, 2ptalia - Fandom, Hetalia: Axis Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 01:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17633258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristyLN/pseuds/ChristyLN
Summary: The year is 1946. The war ended just a year ago and while most are trying move on, one nation are stuck in his own misery. Actions have to be taking and Luciano is ready to do so. Which is why we find our broken nation just as he has finally decided to cross the German border.





	Guilt at gunpoint

* * *

 

The year was 1946. A year had gone by since the war, which tore most of the world apart, had ended. Most had used this time to try and make everything return to the way it once was. Heal open wounds. Repair broken hearts. Humans, as well as the nations they belonged to, did what they had to do, to try and restore their broken world.

This also applied to the man who, in that moment, crossed the German border. Luciano Vargas, the northern half of the Kingdom of Italy, had a simple goal in mind. A goal he was determined to execute no matter what. For months after the war had ended, Luciano had locked himself away inside his own house, going through the events of the war again and again. The battles he had lost. The mistakes he had made. The countless lives of not only Italian soldiers, but also civilians, which he had let slip between his hands. Deaths which now kept him up at night, due to the physical and mental scarring, they had left him with. Luciano Vargas was drowning in frustration and anger. This burning hatred was not only directed towards himself, however. It also targeted the man, who alone was responsible for many of these lives being taken away.

 

Luciano found the man he was looking for near a pile of ruins, he assumed must have once been a town. Even though a year had passed, the stench of gun powder and death was still hanging in the air. Lutz Beilschmidt stood leaning up against the crumbling outer wall, which had once been built to protect the now demolished town. Yet another victim of the war’s destructive force. Lutz looked worse than Luciano had ever seen him. It seemed like the Allied Forces had already been dragging him through hell.

_It’s not enough._

As he slowly walked closer, Lutz noticed the sound of the footsteps and looked up. His facial expression bore not a single sign of surprise.  

“I had a feeling you were going to show up like this at some point”.

“You know me so well”. Luciano’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Lutz shrugged lightly, his eyes fixated on Luciano, who had now stopped only a few meters away from him. His gaze fell on the pistol holster, hanging from Luciano’s belt. In sharp contrast to Lutz’s more casual attire, Luciano wore full uniform. Noticing the other’s stare, Luciano drew the pistol, looking down at it with dull eyes. Even though he acknowledged and admired the pistol’s great power and practical use, he had never been much fan of using it himself. He felt like it took away some of the thrill of the fight. He wasn’t sure why he had chosen this specific weapon to carry out his plan. The way it felt slightly uncomfortable in his hand just seemed strangely fitting.

 “Ardeatine. Sant'Anna di Stazzema. Marzabotto”. The last two had left Luciano bedridden with chronic pains for days on end. The connection between the country and the people was always there and when countless lives were lost simultaneously, the country was sure to feel it. To suffer from it. “Civilians. Over a thousand of them”.

“I thought you were indifferent to them”.  

It was no secret that Luciano had no care nor sympathy for humans. He saw them as tools, as nothing but mere pawns, available for his own amusement to be played with, in his big game whenever he wished for it. These humans, however, had been snatched away from him before he had had a chance to put them to use. Their deaths had been for nothing more than for the enemy to make a statement. The enemy, which had been an ally for the majority of the war. The feelings of humiliation, of guilt and anger, the war had left inside of Luciano, all culminated into something that, to some extent, could resemble real sympathy towards those who had died because of the man in front of him.   

“Get down on your knees”. Luciano’s voice was dangerously low, although his order was sharp and clear.

Living up to his image of the perfect soldier, Lutz complied without saying a word. He got down on his knees and put his hands behind his back, perfectly mirroring the victims killed by his own men years prior. Luciano wasn’t sure if Lutz obeyed without putting up a fight due to a feeling of remorse, or if he just wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. The Italian didn’t care enough to ask. As Luciano loaded his pistol, he spoke up again. Deeply focused on his work, Luciano started to slowly list the civilians, who had been killed in the massacres.

He knew every one of their names. Not because he had taken the time to learn them, but because they were his people. Every country instinctively knew the names of their citizens, however since this information was mostly useless for them, it was usually stored away in the back of their minds. But now Luciano forced them to emerge from his subconscious, spun them around in his mind and tasted the syllables in his mouth.

Then came the first shot. It was fired as an act of revenge, and it was fired as an act of honor for the name, Luciano had spoken out loud seconds before he pulled the trigger. Lutz let a groan, as the bullet pierced through his outer layer of clothing, tore the skin apart and dug into the flesh underneath. Blood quickly soaked through the fabric and a few drops dripped down on the ground, but never did Lutz move as much as an inch. The echo of the blast had barely died down before Luciano fired the next shot. Working like a machine, Luciano repeatedly followed the same pattern for every single shot he fired.

Name.

Shot.

Name.

Shot.

Crimson blood splattered everywhere, making the dark wall behind Lutz look like a gorgeous artwork. A grotesque depiction of a real-life event. The German was still sitting on his knees, head hung low, motionless, his heavy breathing being the only indication that he was still conscious. Luciano slowly moved forward, still mumbling names as he kicked the other man down on his back, exposing his face. Lutz’s eyes were blank and empty, staring up at the dark sky above them without really seeing it at all. The sight made Luciano’s blood boil even more fiercely than before.

_Don’t you dare become unconscious before I’m done with you._

He slammed his foot down, taking in the sound of the bones in Lutz’s fingers breaking under his boot. This was not enough. It would never be enough.

Name.

Shot.

Name.

Click.

Reload.

Shot.

  
It could have lasted for just a few minutes. It could have lasted for hours. Luciano would never be able to tell. It was as if time stopped working for him. As if he was inside a vacuum, in which the only thing he could focus on were the countless piercing blasts of the pistol being fired. It wasn’t until he noticed that blood had splatted onto him as well, that he finally broke free from his trance. He looked down, only to see that Lutz had long since fainted from his injuries. Feeling nothing but a hollow emptiness, Luciano threw the pistol away. What was the point in punishing a man who wasn’t even awake to experience it? He hadn’t been able to get through all the names still roaming around in his head. There were still so many of them. Hundreds of them. Luciano fell down on his knees, staring down at his blood-soaked hands. The hands which had taken the lives of so many people in the past. The hands which, despite this, hadn’t been able to prevent his own defeat. He would never be able to erase his mistakes. History could not be rewritten.

Never once looking back at the unconscious body behind him, Luciano began the long walk back to his homeland. Back to the endless reminders of his failures.

 

* * *

 

 It didn’t take long after the three nations had been notified of what had happened, before they all arrived to see for themselves. The United States, Allen F. Jones, who had had to travel the longest was also the most tired and the most pissed-off when he finally entered the small hospital in the outskirts of a remote German town, where he had been informed to meet up. In there he found Oliver Kirkland and François Bonnefoy, the respective countries of The United Kingdom and The French Republic. They both stood by a hospital bed, in which lied an unconscious figure. Allen immediately recognized of the face of the nation he had been fighting against for years. The nation whom he, as well as the two other men standing in the room, had occupied after the war had ended.   

“Would someone mind telling me what the hell has been going on here?” Allen’s eyes traveled from the unmoving body in the bed over to the other two nations in the room. His impatience was crystal clear.

“One of my soldiers found him like that”. Even though Oliver’s voice was naturally softer and more high-pitched than the others’, the serious tone left no doubt about his state of mind. He had been speaking like that for the entirety of the war. “He was brought out here to avoid too much attention from the locals”.

“And do we know anything about who’s responsible for this?” Allen’s question lingered in the air for a moment, all three nations keeping silent as they eyed each other. Even though they had fought together as allies during the war, the distrust spawned over hundreds of years was not easily forgotten.

“According to the nurse, he was shot approximately 104 times”. Unfaced by Allen’s skeptic look, Oliver continued: “François and I also went to examine the place he was found before you arrived. There was no trace of a fight”.

“We found this, however,” François added, holding up a dirt-covered pistol between two fingers. “A Beretta M1934”. A raised eyebrow from Allen urged François to continue explaining. “Italian”.

Allen gritted his teeth in fury. “Are you telling me that that dirty dog, Vargas, just casually marched in on our territory and did this? I’m going to—"

Oliver held up his hand for Allen to stop talking. “You know, as well as I do, that he hasn’t broken any international laws by being on this territory. He also didn’t declare war on Germany as a country, but instead went after Lutz as a person. If he lets it stay at that, then there isn’t really anything we can do about it”.

Knowing that Oliver was right, Allen forced himself to calm down. He went over and sat down on a small, wooden chair right beside the bed. Seeing the poor state his former enemy was in, reminded Allen of the day, the Germans had finally surrendered. After all the bombardments, all the fighting, all the killings, it hadn’t been a surprise to see that Lutz had become nothing more than a fragment of his former self. A broken reflection. Allen felt no sympathy for him, however. After all that this man, his brother and his former allies had put the world through, Allen could only see his agony as being well deserved.

“As much as I enjoy seeing a beaten-up Nazi,” Allen leaned forward in his chair, once again shifting his attention away from the unconscious figure in the bed. “Why the hell did Vargas even do this in the first place? The war is over, they both lost. I mean, if he isn’t trying to start another war, then what’s even the point?”

“Trying to look for a point would be meaningless”

Unexpectedly, it was François who decided to speak up. He stood in the corner of the room by himself, surrounded by a thin cloud of smoke coming from the lit cigarette in his hand. Tired eyes staring out at the field beyond the window, his mind wandering off to old battles. Long since concluded, but the pain never forgotten.

“We demolished the Axis Powers like we set out to do. How they choose to pick up the broken pieces of themselves is not for us to decide”.

 

* * *

 

 About a week after the incident, when the news of Lutz’s hospitalization had spread throughout the world, Luciano received a letter from his brother. This was not an unusual occurrence though. Flavio Vargas had written multiple letters to Luciano all year, since his isolation had made it impossible for Flavio to get in contact with him face-to-face. These letters were usually quite long; telling about the work their people did to rebuild their broken cities or the occasional worried pleading for Luciano to remember to take care of himself. Luciano had never bothered to actually write a response and the letters usually ended up in the trashcan within the first few hours of receiving them. This particular letter, however, even though it was much shorter than any of the previous ones, Luciano could not make himself throw out. Instead, it was saved in the bottom drawer of his working desk, where it would remand untouched and unseen by anyone, until Luciano suddenly found it again, decades later.

 

_Dear Luci_

_Thank you._

_-F._


End file.
